LibreTexts

What LibreTexts is

LibreTexts is a non-profit open educational resource (OER) platform where instructors find, remix and publish free textbooks, paired with ADAPT, a homework and assessment system that draws on a shared question bank. It serves the instructor or institution putting students through a course: faculty who want to replace a commercial textbook and homework package, OER librarians running campus programs, and departments that want to write question banks together. The About page describes LibreTexts as "the world's largest collection of free OER textbooks online" and the home page counts 500+ schools and organizations, 3,000+ textbooks, 300K+ homework questions and 75M+ dollars in student savings. The leadership team listed on the About page is headed by Delmar Larsen, a chemistry professor who is CEO and founder.

Textbook libraries and authoring

The home page lists 17 subject field libraries, and the site's menu names Biology, Business, Chemistry, Engineering, Español, Geosciences, Humanities, K-12, Mathematics, Health Sciences, Physics, Social Sciences, Statistics and Workforce among them. The feature list promises over 2000 textbooks for various courses, plus case studies, lab experiments and interactive modules.

The authoring side is what makes it a course authoring tool rather than a reading library. An instructor can remix chapters from several different books together with their own material into a custom textbook, then embed Jupyter Notebooks, ADAPT homework questions, 3D visualizations and videos directly into the pages. Conductor is the tool for authoring your own OER, Commons serves as a repository for teaching and companion materials, and the menu also lists a Bookstore, Studio and the Launchpad getting-started area. The libraries themselves are powered by NICE CXone Expert, according to the Supporters page.

The testimonials explain why instructors switch. An OER librarian writes that faculty building OER in general tools end up with resources that "can take 150–300 hours to develop", and that after moving to LibreTexts "Tasks that once required over 100 hours now take just one or two." She adds that students get their materials "in print, on their phones, embedded in Canvas, or on the LibreTexts website." A Lake Tahoe Community College math professor says he can fix an unclear explanation or add examples quickly, and that his students' "performance has not been hindered."

ADAPT, the homework system

ADAPT, also called the LibreTexts Homework System, is a web-based tool for creating, managing and delivering homework assignments, integrated with the LibreTexts textbooks. Signing up for an account is free. The getting-started guide walks through the workflow: create a course, create an assignment, then add questions either from the library of existing questions or by writing new ones, entering the question text, the correct answer and any incorrect answers, with images, videos and other media attached. Question types include multiple choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank and essay. A question found in another course can be cloned, and instructors can search questions by keyword or browse other people's courses.

Toggle switches control what students can see, for example hiding the correct answer until after the due date. Assignments go out as a shared link, submissions are graded from a Grade Assignments tab, and feedback can be given as comments or through ADAPT's built-in rubric feature. A control panel shows the status of each assignment. The home page describes the bank behind all this as over 240,000 openly licensed elements, combined with "personalized learning models", and says new question and activity types are always being developed. The training catalog also covers ADAPT question authoring including Learning Trees.

Shared authoring is the point for some users. The lead editor of an open nursing OER project writes that ADAPT lets nursing faculty "from around the world" create and share NCLEX Next-Generation style questions and case studies for licensure exam practice. A librarian at West Los Angeles College mentions an AI tutoring tool the team was developing for integration into ADAPT. A Kansas State professor who has used ADAPT for four years calls it "an indispensable part of my pedagogy".

Training, certification and support

The LibreTexts Academy, which calls itself a center for open instructional innovation and professional development, carries most of the support. Free monthly webinars started in January 2025, beginning with how to register for an account and moving on to authoring your own OER with Conductor, customizing existing OER, an introduction to ADAPT, and Commons as a repository for ancillary materials. Office hours run Tuesday and Thursday at 9am PT/12pm ET, there is a monthly newsletter and First Friday feature updates, and asynchronous training modules are marked as coming soon.

Instructors can earn badges or become a LibreTexts Certified OER Instructor through online trainings on using the platform as a textbook replacement, remixing content, maintaining content, Jupyter Notebook incorporation, ADAPT question authoring, accessibility and content curation, and train-the-trainer certification. For groups there are project-based training cohorts, virtual, in-person or hybrid, with a cafeteria-style menu of topics and exclusive office hours: summer-long intensive cohorts for institutions, year-long support cohorts, institution-based cohorts and in-person workshops. The Academy suggests writing a cohort into a professional development grant, with certifications or badges as the outcome. Campuses can also join the LibreNet consortium.

What it costs

The Academy page says that with a verified instructor account "you have the technological resources available for FREE already". Paid services are priced on the person-hours involved: a hosted workshop for a group can range from $1500 to $5000, depending on whether it is half-day, full-day or several days and whether it runs in person or virtually, with a Services Pricing Guide and an interest form for details. One Chabot College instructor who co-authored three Spanish OER texts writes that with the free ADAPT homework her students no longer pay for "the $200 textbook bundle". The Supporters page names the California State University Affordable Learning Solutions Program, the UC Davis Office of the Provost, UC Davis Library and Merlot among its financial partners.

Who it suits

LibreTexts suits college and school instructors who want to drop a paid textbook and homework bundle without giving up assigned practice, and the testimonials come from math, biology, chemistry, Spanish and nursing faculty among others. OER coordinators and librarians get a full program around it: tools, training, badges and cohorts that can be written into grants. Departments that want a shared question bank, like the nursing faculty writing licensure-style items together, get cloning, shared courses and a common bank to work from. The trade-off is effort: the platform rewards instructors willing to remix and edit, and someone looking for a finished course to switch on will spend time assembling one. ADAPT is a homework system, so teams that need locked-down, proctored exams will want a separate tool for those.